S.G. Goodman

Hickman, the church, and a philosophy degree

S.G. Goodman was born in 1989 in Hickman, a small town in the far south-western corner of Kentucky where the state meets the Mississippi. Her father farmed. The Southern Baptist church was the centre of the week — the family attended three times — and church is where she first sang in public. She took up rhythm guitar at fifteen.

In 2007 she moved to Murray to study philosophy at Murray State University, and she has stayed in Murray ever since. Her first recorded work was not solo: she co-founded the band The Savage Radley with the drummer Stephen Montgomery, and their album Kudzu came out on Slough Water Records, the small imprint that would later carry her third solo album. She plays Guild Starfires, chosen for their humbucker pickups.

Two records, and a song other people kept singing

Old Time Feeling arrived in 2020, co-produced by Jim James of My Morning Jacket, and put her in the Americana conversation more or less immediately. Teeth Marks followed on Verve Forecast on 3 June 2022, trailed by the single Heart Swell on 6 May. She played drums on that track — the first time she had done so on a record — and has said she wrote it on her back porch in Kentucky, remembering how loud the cicadas had been in 2015 while she was going through a break-up, the buzzing outside matching the heartache inside. That year she toured with Son Volt and opened shows for Jason Isbell.

The song that travelled furthest was Space and Time, from the debut. Tyler Childers covered it, and Devonté Hynes and Mereba recorded a version for the 2022 film Master Gardener, which brought Goodman a 2023 Hollywood Music in Media Award nomination as co-writer. In the same year the Americana Music Association named her Emerging Artist of the Year.

The year behind the third record

The period between Teeth Marks and what came next was punishing. A heavy touring schedule was followed in 2023 by the death of her dog, Howard, and of Mike Harmon, her mentor and father figure. She had also fallen out with her long-standing collaborator Matthew Rowan. They reconciled, and Rowan ended up co-producing the album that resulted.

The organising idea arrived in late 2022, when Goodman came across a section in Foxfire about planting by the signs — the old practice of timing crops to the moon's passage through the zodiac — and began recalling the moon phases and signs she had heard talked about throughout her childhood. The title was fixed long before the songs were finished.

Planting by the Signs was released on 20 June 2025 through Slough Water Records and Thirty Tigers. It runs 48 minutes, and the songs run between three and eight minutes, a deliberate loosening of the brevity she had been known for. Rowan, Goodman and Drew Vandenberg share the production credit; most of it was recorded at NuttHouse in Sheffield, Alabama, with Rowan on guitars and Craig Burletic on bass. Bonnie "Prince" Billy sings on Nature's Child. Three singles preceded it: Fire Sign on 2 April, Satellite on 23 April and Snapping Turtle on 14 May, the last with a video directed by the documentary film-maker Elaine McMillion Sheldon.

Reviewers treated it as a step up. Paste gave it 8.4 and its critic Andy Crump wrote that the record is "constitutionally about wrangling one's grief" and also "about accepting its circumstances, agonizingly beyond our control as they are", singling out Michael Told Me, Heaven Song and I Can See the Devil alongside the singles. Pitchfork scored it 8.1; Mojo and Record Collector each gave four stars.

Where she stands in September 2026

The awards recognition followed a year behind the record. In May 2026 the Americana Music Association named Goodman in two categories: Album of the Year for Planting by the Signs and Song of the Year for Snapping Turtle, alongside Brandi Carlile, I'm With Her, Margo Price and Tyler Childers. She performed at the 25th Americana Honors & Awards at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on 16 September 2026. Neither nomination converted — Album of the Year went to Childers for Snipe Hunter, Song of the Year to Carlile's Returning to Me, and Molly Tuttle was named Artist of the Year.

The touring has been close to continuous since the album landed. The first half of 2026 included support-length sets at The Van Buren in Phoenix on 24 March and in Austin on 26 March, then a run of summer festivals: Solid Sound at MASS MoCA on 27 June, the Calgary Folk Festival on 25 July and the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival at Lyons, Colorado on 7 August. A short British stretch followed in early September — The Hug & Pint in Glasgow on 4 September, Manchester Psych Fest in the Pink Room at YES on 5 September, and the Garden Stage at End of the Road, held at Larmer Tree Gardens from 3 to 6 September.

The autumn run opened with a homecoming at Murray State University on 17 September and continues to The Armory in Fort Collins on 10 November. Between those it takes in the XPoNential Music Festival in Camden from 18 to 20 September, Bourbon and Beyond in Louisville from 24 to 27 September, the Southgate House Revival in Newport on 25 September, the Purple Fiddle in Thomas, West Virginia on 26 September, The Broadberry in Richmond on 29 September, the 40 Watt in Athens on 1 October, ShoalsFest in Florence, Alabama on 3 and 4 October, Proud Larry's in Oxford, Mississippi on 6 October, Chickie Wah Wah in New Orleans on 7 October, the second weekend of Austin City Limits from 9 to 11 October, and a City Winery date in Nashville with Margo Price on 19 October. She is also booked on the Cayamo cruise in 2027.

On stage

Goodman assembled a new band for this album cycle and told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in October 2025 that she was having a good time with them, that the group had worked to carry the narrative of Planting by the Signs into the live set, and that she was prioritising a full airing of the new record over the back catalogue. She also noted that the tour was following the same routing as her last headline run before Mike Harmon died, which made it feel like a circle closing. Of the audiences she said it was "just really special" to see people prioritise turning up for live music and wanting the same sense of community.

The sets scale to the room. A headline club show at the Thunderbird Cafe and Music Hall in Pittsburgh on 23 June 2026 ran to eleven songs; 3S Artspace in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on 28 June ran to twelve. At Solid Sound she played twice in a day — a twelve-song set and, separately, a solo pop-up inside Building 6 that amounted to three songs: I'm in Love, Solitaire and Linda Put Your Titties Away. The shorter support sets earlier in the year were built around the record's singles, with covers dropped in: the Butthole Surfers' Pepper in Phoenix on 24 March and Townes Van Zandt's Lungs in Austin on 26 March. Space and Time closed both.